SHADOW OF THE BEAST (1989) by Roger Dean had beautiful, atmospheric music and graphics—I remember my brother and his friends talking about it. One of those “Whoa, have you seen that game?” games, like a mysterious stranger entering a town. The box art was by Roger Dean.
SPEEDBALL 2: BRUTAL DELUXE (1990), based I believe on the movie ROLLERBALL (1975), was a violent sports game by The Bitmap Brothers. You have to remember that back then, nerds such as my brother ruled video game land, so games generally had an underground aspect to them, their general aesthetic consisting of heavy metal, gore, dystopia, lone rage. (Look at the top games in Apple’s App Store to see how this has changed.) The box art by Glenn Fabry (2000 AD) obviously reflects that.
GODS (1991) also came from The Bitmap Brothers, whom I remember had a kind of underground hero status. The mainstream media knew f all about games; the only times they reported about it was when a particular game had gone too far in the eyes of the upholders of civilization, like CARMAGEDDON. Really though, for the longest time, games, like comics, were regarded as a threat to a wholesome upbringing. Acts of violence by young people were always somehow traced back to computer games. The art here is by Simon Bisley, who like Glenn Fabry had published in magazines like 2000 AD and REVOLVER.
We eat eggs and I tell Y about how when I was 8 years old, I taught my white friend, B (actually called Becky), how to count to 10 in Urdu. How at school the next day she looked at her feet as she shuffled past me, and the white teacher pulled me aside and asked me why I was bullying Becky, because Becky’s mum said I was bullying Becky, and that maybe it would be best if I didn’t sit next to her anymore. She suggested this with the kind of half-arsed, sad-eyed, apologetic shrug that white women perform when it is less of a scene to administer psychological warfare against a brown child than it is to challenge your fellow white woman.
That was my entire childhood.
I remember well the acute shock and confusion of that day. I
had been so damn sure Becky and I were having a good time. I felt so
guilty, despite my mother’s insistence that Becky’s mother was a racist
bitch and that I had done nothing wrong. I felt frightened of myself and
my potential to hurt innocent white girls without even realizing it.
We are taught to walk home with our keys between our fingers for
protection from men in the night, but no one tells us how to defend
ourselves from the white women who will try to ravage us from the inside
out, with a smile, a comment, a betrayal, a vital inaction, a look. How
they will choose comfort over effort, how they will read this and think
I am talking about someone else, another pardon.
